[Champion Concept] Caleb, the Hero Seeker

[Champion Concept] Caleb, the Hero Seeker

Before I begin, I would like to say that, since I began to play this game a few weeks ago, I have been plagued by a rather large number of ideas for possible champions, with three, this one included, sticking out in particular. This idea actually came to me today, a few hours before this posting. I finally decided I would look around on the forums for a place to suggest these ideas, and so came across this wonderful place.

Now that I am here, I am posting this first draft of the concept for Caleb. As I am still quite new to the game, I may not be able to use some terminology accurately. This, of course, is one of the reasons I'm putting this here.

Finally, I'd like to explain a few things about Caleb. His weapon is, basically, a spear, although the head is a bladed ring. The inside of the ring is decorated/designed to make the weapon look like a large Dream Catcher on a stick.

anyways, on to the main event! I shall begin with a "lore" entry I formulated for him, followed by ideas for his abilities. I will happily read over any and all Constructive Criticism, which will ideally help me make this idea even better.

but seriously though main event time.

================================================== Caleb - the Hero Seeker
==================================================
Every land, no matter what dimension it might exist in, eventually needs a hero to save it from some form of disaster. More often than not, the hero is on his own, using his or her skills to sweep in and save the day. Occasionally, the hero of the story is more out of focus, as with larger groups of heroes, or even completely unknown to the world at large. However, a rather rare and unfortunate event will occur on occasion; the hero that would be never arrives at all. The defenseless world is struck a powerful blow, the people that at first fight back will eventually lose their spirit, and desolation sits down upon it's newly crafted throne; there is no warrior to fight it off. In such cases the land is often lost, as no one has the strength to rise up against the desolation to save their forsaken world.

Caleb hails from such a land, a place existing past the barriers of time and space. He was raised up in a place that had no hero, and as he aged into young adulthood his pity for the land increased until, finally, it metamorphosed into a powerful resolve. The resolve to find someone, anyone, who could be the hero his homeland desperately needed. Setting off with his unusual weapon, improvised from a broken spear and staff, he traveled across the dying world seeking out the hero of his world's story. As the months passed, his search turned up new friends, heroes who possessed the skill and resolve to rise up, together, and breath life back into their dead land; each one, without Caleb ever realizing, placing their faith in him as the heart of their group.

It is unknown how Caleb found himself on Runeterra, a stranger in a world whose heroes had successfully played their part time and time again, and when asked he will not reply. It is speculated that he threw himself from his own world to save it, or that perhaps he and his band of friends, the Heroes, failed in their quest, and he found a way to leave the hopeless world. Without his personal testimony, the true ending shall remain a mystery.
==================================================

Abilities:

Passive - Dream Catcher(alternate name "Seeker's Promise"):
Caleb will do his best to carry on the wishes of a fallen friend. Whenever an allied champion is slain, the cool-downs for all of Caleb's abilities immediately drop ten seconds. In addition, Caleb has +10 tenacity for each dead allied champion.

- Active: Caleb strikes at the target, dealing 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 / 150(+0.75 per AD) physical damage, and an additional 10 / 25 / 40 / 65 / 80(+0.75 per AP) magic damage 1.5 seconds later. The ability can be activated a second time within 3 seconds for 1.5 times the original Mana cost to create a flux of magical energy around the target for 4 seconds, dealing 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 (+0.1 per ability power) magic damage per second and reducing the effect of health regeneration and the healing effects received by 50%

- Passive: Whenever an ability is used near Caleb his Mana is restored by 10 / 25 / 40(+ 5/10/15% of the triggering Ability's Cost). This passive may only be triggered by the same champion once every 3 seconds.

Once again, I'm still rather new to the game. Some things might seem overwhelmingly powerful, or exactly the opposite. I'd very much appreciate it if these things are pointed out first so that they can be remedied.

Really, all comments are appreciated, I very much like to see feedback on my projects! ^-^

EDIT 1, 3-2-2012: For the passive, I did a bit of number crunching and decided that as it was it was too powerful, and have since reduced the percentages. I know for a fact that it is not uncommon for a champion to have at least 600 AP through items alone by the end of the game, and so created a chart to see how effective his passive actually is. The AP values listed are assumed approximations of how much AP Caleb might have at the stage of the passive listed.

This seems, to me, reasonable considering the fact that allies have to be dead for the passive to function. However, it might still be lowered(or increased!) if needed.

As for movement speed, I have not found the time to do the math on that just yet, although due to the diminishing returns mechanic of movement speed in the game I'm not at all worried about it. As I revisit this I shall continue to expand on numbers, and hopefully I'll soon decide on proper mana costs and cool-downs for the Abilities, in addition to solid numbers on the attack speed bonus of Seeker's Resolve.

EDIT 2, 3-2-2012:

- Today I looked at a guide or two that explained a few key details in champion creation, I have adjusted all of Caleb's skills accordingly(this primarily has to do with numerical values)

In addition, all of the missing numerical values have been filled. Each skill now has a cooldown, mana cost, and damage associated with it. Those that require a range have been given ranges, ect. So yeah.

Currently, I am working on quotes for Caleb as well as a physical description. I will very likely place these in this post, if I do so before making a Second Draft of the Hero Seeker. Other information that does not belong in the above post will be added here as well.
EDIT, 3-2-2012: Here is a base stat chart for the character. I do not claim to know much about the inner workings of the game, and mostly pulled these from the guide I mentioned(Obviously choosing values which should get the idea of the champ across).

I am bumping this only to draw attention to the fact that I have made changes to the passive, and have provided a bit of mathematical shenanigans in relation to it's effects at the bottom of the intro post.

So yeah, that's it. Aside from that I'd just like to say that any feedback at all would be awesome.

(Jegus this triple post thing makes me seem really impatient, I must apologize. I will not be bumping this again unless there is a significant change made or a week has passed, provided there are still no comments by the time this occurs.)

Welcome to the concept forums! This is a very well written first entry I'm happy to say.

If you haven't gone to one, be sure to check out http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com or any of the many other LoL fansites and databases to read all the gritty details of the existing champions. Helps to know what's out there when you're making new stuff.

Lore: Not bad. A bit rambling. Riot's model is usually two paragraphs of 3 to 7 sentences each. First paragraph describes where they came from, second gets into what they're doing now and why they joined the League. Not a hard and fast rule, just something to keep in mind. In depth exploration of personality usually comes in the League Judgment (which they've sadly stopped doing).

Also, Caleb needs to believe in himself! He's the hero of his own story!

Stat numbers look fine. I'm not the best expert on those but they're in the right vicinity.

Ok, onto the abilities!

Passive - Dream Catcher: Ok, last man standing effect. Banking on your allies dying isn't great, but it's a fact of life, much like Kog'Maw or Karthus' "die better" abilities. It ought to be part of the gameplan though. Kog'Maw knows he'll get focus fired because he's a carry. karthus is a squishy mage and his passive lets him continue to impact the battle even if he gets assassinated early.

In this case, Dream Catcher comes across as a strong fighter/tank ability to encourage opponents to attack Caleb first and to mitigate the loss of teammates by growing stronger himself to compensate. Looking over his abilities, the AP bonus seems to result in increased healing and extra damage on Heroes' Rage. That's going to be good over a prolonged fight, but probably won't impact a quick team fight much, which is where you'll usually see multiple ally deaths.

Also, it's a somewhat random bonus. You can't control when it will be available and you can't plan your own actions much around it. Karthus for example can charge into the center of a fight knowing that positioning when he dies is important.

Ability 1 (Q) - Seeking Charge Applying on hit effects is pretty strong. The damage isn't too high for the physical, but the magic damage is strong. 100 mana is a high cost for level 1. Most abilities don't go above 80 for rank 1.

It's an interesting ability. I think the mana cost might need to go down a bit.
Ability 2 (W) - Seeker's Resolve: Ok, first, 60 seconds is far too long a cooldown for a basic ability. Soraka has the best basic heal I think and it's only 20 seconds. The haste effect is also too long for a basic ability at 15 seconds at rank 5. For a comparable effect, Miss Fortune's Impure shots has a CD of 16 seconds with a duration of 6 seconds. I would suggest trying to get into that area of around 33-50% uptime before cooldown reduction.

Ability 3 (E) - Hero's Rage : A lot of long cooldowns at low ranks for Caleb. You should try to pick one he can use more frequently or it makes it less exciting to play at low levels and harder to lane against opponents. I'm not sure what the second activation is doing. What does it mean to ignite the person? Is that the magic damage?

Ultimate (R) - Gathering Power/Mystic Union: The passive mechanic seems alright. It seems to mainly encourage laning with allies and not roaming solo. I would prefer it if it were more like Kassadin's Nether Blade where he gets mana for attacking. Not saying to do that specifically, but again, you want to encourage players to use the champion in certain ways through the passive abilities. It's a way to reward skillful play. Question: What is the radius of this effect? How far away can it draw in power from?

The base damage on Mystic Union seems a bit low. 200/300/400 would probably be more reasonable, especially given the relatively small size of the blast zone and limited range. When you say "allied champions can be used as the center?" is that a global effect? Can I throw this down on a teammate on the other side of the map like Gangplank's cannons?

I'm trying to figure out what this character's role is. AP scaling off the innate makes me think Mage, but many of the abilities also scale off AD, and he's got sustain and auto-attack buffing, which makes me think Carry. Could be similar to Ezreal in that regard. What role would you say he fills? I didn't see it mentioned.

Overall, it's a very good first effort. Fairly straight forward, but the abilities make sense and aren't crazy. Only big issues I see are a lack of clarity in the theme and role and the basic ability numbers (particularly for the cooldowns) being a bit off. Nice work!

Check out my compilation of forum guides when you get a chance. A lot of very smart people give some excellent advice on design and posting.

Lore: Not bad. A bit rambling. Riot's model is usually two paragraphs of 3 to 7 sentences each. First paragraph describes where they came from, second gets into what they're doing now and why they joined the League. Not a hard and fast rule, just something to keep in mind. In depth exploration of personality usually comes in the League Judgment (which they've sadly stopped doing).

Also, Caleb needs to believe in himself! He's the hero of his own story!

Yeah, really all I can say to this is I do agree that the lore needs some work. Although I would like to clarify that him not realizing that his actions are heroic is part of his character, what with him seeing himself as more an enabler, but acting in a way that others would see as heroic. Sort of contradictory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merylindra

Passive - Dream Catcher: Ok, last man standing effect. Banking on your allies dying isn't great, but it's a fact of life, much like Kog'Maw or Karthus' "die better" abilities. It ought to be part of the gameplan though. Kog'Maw knows he'll get focus fired because he's a carry. karthus is a squishy mage and his passive lets him continue to impact the battle even if he gets assassinated early.

In this case, Dream Catcher comes across as a strong fighter/tank ability to encourage opponents to attack Caleb first and to mitigate the loss of teammates by growing stronger himself to compensate. Looking over his abilities, the AP bonus seems to result in increased healing and extra damage on Heroes' Rage. That's going to be good over a prolonged fight, but probably won't impact a quick team fight much, which is where you'll usually see multiple ally deaths.

Also, it's a somewhat random bonus. You can't control when it will be available and you can't plan your own actions much around it. Karthus for example can charge into the center of a fight knowing that positioning when he dies is important.

This passive is one of the more sketchy parts of Caleb's set-up, I'll admit. I have to thank you for mentioning all these things, but might I ask how you yourself would alter it? Or perhaps what you would change it to in order to make it fit the character better?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merylindra

Ability 1 (Q) - Seeking Charge Applying on hit effects is pretty strong. The damage isn't too high for the physical, but the magic damage is strong. 100 mana is a high cost for level 1. Most abilities don't go above 80 for rank 1.

It's an interesting ability. I think the mana cost might need to go down a bit.

Alright, here's where I think I might be able to better comment. First up, the physical damage is low to prevent the attack from being too powerful as a whole, since it applies on-hit effects during that physical damage stage. Also, I have been having issues with figuring out what to do for the mana costs and cooldowns for each of these abilities. This ability is actually supposed to have a function as both a damaging move and an escape mechanic, and I'd like to make the player have to apply it in a strategic way. Like, "should I use this now for the damage and risk not having it to escape, or should I save it for an almost sure-fire way to get some distance if I lose too much HP?"

Granted, too large a mana cost isn't the best way to do that, and per your advice I think I'll tweak that a bit. How about a scaling cost? 40/50/60/70/80 mana? Or just set it at 60 flat out?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merylindra

Ability 2 (W) - Seeker's Resolve: Ok, first, 60 seconds is far too long a cooldown for a basic ability. Soraka has the best basic heal I think and it's only 20 seconds. The haste effect is also too long for a basic ability at 15 seconds at rank 5. For a comparable effect, Miss Fortune's Impure shots has a CD of 16 seconds with a duration of 6 seconds. I would suggest trying to get into that area of around 33-50% uptime before cooldown reduction.

Alright, starting off the cooldown I'll admit is(like a lot of others) is pretty derpified. However, it is likely me overcompensating for the attack speed bonus, which I will admit is probably also a bit OP. I actually looked at Warwick and Soraka's Hunter's Call and Astral Blessing, and after looking at the effects, their multiple-targetness, and their cooldowns, formulated this ability. it's very likely I may have overcompensated for the duration with a much longer cooldown than needed.

Going into fixes for this, I'll start with the cooldown. since Soraka's is actually more potent(And can target more than just Soraka), I'll go ahead and use the same cooldown as her basic heal, with a flat 20 seconds instead of the current scaling of 60 / 50 / 40 / 30 / 20. Going on to the Haste portion, how does a scaling alteration from 3 / 6 / 9 / 12 / 15 sec to 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 / 12? Looking at Warwick, the maximum effect is lower than him(and only effects Caleb), while only lasting two extra seconds. However, if that doesn't work perhaps 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10, maxing the effect at exactly half the cool-down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merylindra

Ability 3 (E) - Hero's Rage : A lot of long cooldowns at low ranks for Caleb. You should try to pick one he can use more frequently or it makes it less exciting to play at low levels and harder to lane against opponents. I'm not sure what the second activation is doing. What does it mean to ignite the person? Is that the magic damage?

Right here is one of two "Curses of Wording." Essentially, I failed to word the effect in a way that fully conveyed what it was supposed to do. However, I think I shall go into that near the end, let's start right into fixes.

This ability I suppose would be the ability that Caleb gets to "spam" as the case may be, as it's probably going to be his primary damaging skill. So going in that direction a fix on the cool-down would be completely necessary. I don't want it to be the same for every level, in which case I'd probably set it to 10 seconds and be done with it. Instead, how about changing it from 30 / 25 / 20 / 15 / 10 sec to 20 / 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 or, if that's not enough(Or too much at higher levels), 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 / 10?

Anyways, for the "ignite" thing, I just didn't know how to word that. Essentially, it would drop the effects of summoner's ignite(Although probably weaker) onto the enemy. Let's see, How about I change the wording of that part to the following:

"The ability can be activated a second time within 3 seconds for 1.5 times the original Mana cost to create a flux of magical energy around the target, dealing 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 (+0.1 per ability power) magic damage per second and reducing the effect of health regeneration and the healing effects received by 50%"

How does that sound? Too strong? too weak? Is it's intended effect at the very least clear now?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merylindra

Ultimate (R) - Gathering Power/Mystic Union: The passive mechanic seems alright. It seems to mainly encourage laning with allies and not roaming solo. I would prefer it if it were more like Kassadin's Nether Blade where he gets mana for attacking. Not saying to do that specifically, but again, you want to encourage players to use the champion in certain ways through the passive abilities. It's a way to reward skillful play. Question: What is the radius of this effect? How far away can it draw in power from?

The base damage on Mystic Union seems a bit low. 200/300/400 would probably be more reasonable, especially given the relatively small size of the blast zone and limited range. When you say "allied champions can be used as the center?" is that a global effect? Can I throw this down on a teammate on the other side of the map like Gangplank's cannons?

Herein lies another Curse of Wording, primarily on the range of the attack. But I shall get to that in a moment, let's start with your questions on the passive. The range on it would probably be abotu the same as the range of, say, Sona's auras. Or, if the opponent is on your screen(Invisible or not), then the passive takes effect. Either one works, and in fact it might be just about the same thing. (I've had difficulties figuring out the range of Sona's, or anyone's, auras)

Now on to the active portion, and the curse of wording I mentioned. When I say that allies can be used as the center for the attacks' range, it basically means, yeah, it's global. So long as the place you are placing the attack is within the listed range of yourself or an ally, it's a legal placement for the ability. Of course, herein lies an important decision. Will you use it on an ally across the map and give up the bonus for using it while you are near others(Or move your focus away from whatever battle you might be in to assist an ally that is one his own on the opposite end of the map, putting yourself at risk)? Or will you save if for when everyone is together and drop it on a foe with maximum power?

to put it in perspective, here is yet another chart; for the damage of Mystic Union this time, using the AP values from the chart I made for the passive(probably not the most accurate, but will work for the chart at least).

Granted, ti's still not as powerful as some other ultimates, but that doesn't make it ineffective.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merylindra

I'm trying to figure out what this character's role is. AP scaling off the innate makes me think Mage, but many of the abilities also scale off AD, and he's got sustain and auto-attack buffing, which makes me think Carry. Could be similar to Ezreal in that regard. What role would you say he fills? I didn't see it mentioned.

Overall, it's a very good first effort. Fairly straight forward, but the abilities make sense and aren't crazy. Only big issues I see are a lack of clarity in the theme and role and the basic ability numbers (particularly for the cooldowns) being a bit off. Nice work!

to answer the question of role, he's supposed to be a type of melee/mage carry hybrid, with his only actual ranged ability being his ult. that aside, thank you very much for the complement AND for reviewing this in the first place! I'd very much like to see what you think of these possible changes, and your answers the the few questions riddled in above!

Regarding the passive, I would change it to have some more immediate effect. Say "Caleb's cooldown timers are reduced by 10 seconds whenever an ally dies. Caleb gains +10 tenacity for every ally currently dead." That way he immediately gets to throw around some additional abilities, and as teammates decline, he's less likely to be shut down by crowd control with a higher tenacity. You can design your build around the tenacity, and it invites immediate reactionary play when an ally goes down.

I think the important thing on the Q is just to have the mana cost not be so high right off the bat. You can end up wherever you feel appropriate, but eating a third of his mana for one ability early game is gonna drain you very quickly.

For the W, I think you should look at Ezreal, Miss Fortune and Gangplank. You're trying to build a mage/carry type character, which is basically what Ezreal is for ranged. Gangplank also has a self-only heal (Remove Scurvy), and Miss Fortune has a self only attack speed buff. Those are closer to what you're building than Soraka or Warwick's abilities.

My issues with the cooldowns, regarding the E, was not that he didn't have any late game he could spam, but that all his early game cooldowns are around 20. You want something with a cooldown around 4-10 seconds at rank 1 that he can take at level 1 and use while laning. Otherwise you just have auto-attack, which can be especially problematic for melee characters, and very problematic for mage characters.

With a global reach, I wouldn't knock this ability at all. Compare it to Gangplank's Cannon Barrage and Karthus' Requiem to get a feel for the damage numbers Riot uses global effects. But yea, a way to help out your buddy from across the map or deal major damage in a team fight is pretty cool.

Alright, thank you very much for all of this advice! If you don't mind looking over it once more, I've made alterations to the abilities listed based on the advice you gave. Please, tell me what you think!